Category: Culture

Pierre Boulle never imagined War for the Planet of the Apes, the latest film in the remade franchise. In fact, it would be fair to say the author of the original book never imagined any of the series, from the first in 1968 to the latest, released in 2017. They were far, far from what he had envisioned in the early 1960s. Warning: spoilers ahead.

Boulle’s 1963 novel, Monkey Planet, was basically a satire and a social commentary. And it wasn’t based in America: the astronauts came from France (and their last view on landing was of the Eiffel Tower not the Statue of Liberty… oops. Spoiler alert!). But it had a lot of contemporary themes common to both, including Cold War jitters.

The novel was scripted into an action movie in 1968, starring the hammy Charlton Heston, with Roddy McDowall (and others) in chimp makeup. Rod Serling of the Twilight Zone fame had a hand in the writing, but so did others, and it ended up a sort-of reflection of Boulle’s original. A fun-house mirror reflection.

While the lumbering Heston would (mercifully) only have a cameo role in the first sequel (Beneath, see below), McDowall starred in the remainder and set the tone for the series.

In the 1968 film, Heston plays a heroic American astronaut who fights to win freedom for the humans and stir up a revolution against ape dominance (ironic that the US was so hep on such concepts when they did them, but took umbrage when anyone else – such as Che Guevara – did it). (Heston went on to become a mouthpiece for the NRA.) The other films have no less histrionic plots.

Although Beneath ends with a “divine” bomb blowing up the planet (apes and mutant humans both), the series went on for three more films, the writers providing a “miraculous” escape for apes Cornelius, Zira and Dr. Milo via an astronaut’s space ship, arriving back in time to 1973. The former couple have a son they call Caesar, who becomes the lead revolutionary in the subsequent two movies, culminating in the final overthrow of humans in Battle for the Planet of the Apes.Continue reading “War for the Planet of the Apes considered”

At the end of most Godzilla films, the audience is led to believe the giant reptile has finally been killed off. Blown up, defeated by another monster, killed by technology, sunk to the bottom of the ocean or suffered some similar fate. And yet there he*** is, hale and hearty in the next film, rampaging through Japan once again, and facing yet another kaiju (giant monster) – or often several. After 32 films, Godzilla still comes back. And so do I.*

I was thinking about Godzilla this week, today in particular. This is the 100th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion. My grandfather was there, and was injured in the blast. Seeing images of the city after the event made me think of images of Hiroshima, and that in turn made me think about Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo. I imagined Godzilla stomping through the low-rise Halifax, a century ago. Funny how the mind works, sometimes.

It began in 1954 with Gojira, the original black-and-white Godzilla movie and still one of the (if not the) best. Film number 32, the animated Godzilla Monster Planet, was released in November, 2017, making this the longest-running film franchise in history.

Gojira – the creation of Tomoyuki Tanaka with writers Shigeru Kayama and Takeo Murata, director Ishiro Honda, and special-effects designer Eiji Tsuburaya – was originally produced as a metaphor for Japanese fears about an uncertain, post-Hiroshima future and where science might lead us without moral restraint. Honda had been a soldier in the war and seen Hiroshima after the bomb, first hand, in 1946.

The film itself was an allegory about the dangers of nuclear war and radiation: the monster himself represented both the bomb and its effects. It was, like Kurosawa’s later 1955 film, I Live in Fear, about Japan’s national “atomophobia,” although not always directly. Godzilla is more than a film monster; he (it) becomes the symbol of Japan’s fate, raising the philosophical question whether Japan deserves his wrath because of its wartime aggression.

As Tim Martin wrote in The Telegraph, it was, “…a sober allegory of a film with ambitions as large as its thrice-normal budget, designed to shock and horrify an adult audience.” The original film still has some of that power.

In 1857 – a year before Collingwood was incorporated as a town – John Hogg launched the Enterprise. The first local newspaper started its presses. In 1870, David Robson launched its first competitor: the Bulletin. In 1881, the Bulletin was sold to William Williams and J.G. Hand. William’s 17-year-old son, David (later a town mayor), joined the paper in 1886.

After the Great Depression, citing financial reasons, the two papers merged: The Enterprise-Bulletin was born. It printed its own paper, as well as being a printer for community events, flyers, brochures and even personal publications. In the 1960s, owner Jack McMurchy sold the paper to the Thomson newspaper chain. The newspaper continued to grow, soon requiring new space. In spring, 1989, the paper moved from the Bulletin’s original location on Simcoe Street to a new building at 77 St. Marie St., half a block east. It thrived there for the next six years, until the chaos began.

Bear with me if the history below seems a bit scattered: following the trail of media sales and bankruptcies is not easy and I may have forgotten or confused some of my dates in the interim.

Back then, the EB published on Wednesdays and Fridays. Each edition ran about 40 pages, split in two or three sections, with the annual local industry and business review edition running 60 or more pages. In 1991, a regional Sunday (Huronia Sunday) edition was launched in cooperation with papers from Barrie, Orillia and Midland. There was talk in the newsroom of going to thrice weekly and even daily publication.

Tucked away at the bottom of a tall display case in the ‘At Home With Monsters’ exhibit at the AGO is a small collection of seven old, well-thumbed books, all by the 19th century French naturalist and entomologist, Jean-Henri Fabre. At the very bottom of the pile, its title almost hidden in the shadows, is The Life of the Spider, first translated into English in 1913, but not translated again until 1971.

The books subtly reflect the importance director and artist Guillermo del Toro places on insects in his works. He calls them “living metaphors” and adds, “They are so alien and so remote and so perfect, but they also are emotionless. They don’t have any human or mammalian instincts.”

I felt a certain thrill at seeing Fabre’s works, especially The Life of the Spider. That very same edition was the first adult book I ever read. I was nine or ten years old, maybe younger, stuck at home with some now-forgotten childhood illness, unable to go to school or out to play. I’m not sure where I got the book. Likely I had taken it out from the local library – probably for some science project or homework – and it was all I had to read that week in bed.

I read it cover to cover, absorbed in the minute details of the behaviour of Fabre’s spiders. It created in me a lifelong appreciation of these arthropods. I must have returned the book after that, because I never saw it again. But it was not forgotten. I was the only one in the gallery bent down, kneeling on the floor to read the book titles.

I had not expected to see this book in the exhibition – which features the monsters and the fantastic visions of writers, artists and filmmakers that appeal to Guillermo del Toro (including several from his own works) – but the sight gave me an immediate sense of familiarity, and of connection with del Toro. No one else I have known has ever read that book, or even knows of its existence. But del Toro does.Continue reading “Guillermo, monsters and me”

At the Corporate & Community Services standing committee meeting this week, the committee discussed the Art on the Street festival, its operation and management to be taken over by the BIA. That’s probably a good thing because any affinity to culture and cultural events at the council table evaporated early this term. A cup of yogurt has more culture in it than The Block has. The whole ‘cultural economy’ thing and all the benefits that cultural tourism can bring has simply flown away this term.*

That report led to a discussion of a local Word on the Street festival, a “national celebration of literacy and the written word.” Apparently there is a move afoot to bring it back (it’s held in September, so I suppose that won’t be until fall 2018). Councillor Kevin Lloyd semi-jokingly suggested that council entertain regular poetry readings at the start of each council meeting to help publicize the event. There was an uncomfortable silence at the committee table (The Block not being able to easily recognize irony or sarcasm).

The stolid faces of The Block collective were shaken by his (somewhat sarcastic) suggestion. The idea that they might have to sit, in stony Politburo-like silence while someone read a poem clearly unnerved them. Even Sleepy Councillor Ecclestone tossed and turned in his sleep, in the grips of a bad dream where words and phrases were dancing around him with menace and malice.

How were they supposed to respond to poetry? Would they make the usual banal “gee that was swell” comments they toss out like candy to staff for run-of-the-mill reports? Or – a frightening thought – would they be expected to comment intelligently and coherently on the nature of the poem, its symbolism, its rhyming scheme, its use of metaphor, how it compared with the work of other poets? That would take The Block far from the safety of their comfort zone over the deep intellectual ocean, a place they had never ventured to.

When The Block plumb the depths of their collective intellect, they don’t need a ruler, much less a measuring tape to measure down to their seabed. Their ship of state is already stranded on its shallow reefs. Keep in mind that their greatest collective intellectual achievement this term is a bylaw that prohibits residents from throwing birdseed on their driveway. To expect them to do anything intelligent with culture – you’re better off wishing for something more achievable. Like world peace. Or the overnight reversal of climate change. Or the Rapture.

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Selective Wisdom

An appropriate quotation for contemporary Collingwood:
"For a people suffers more from the avarice of its magistrates than from the rapacity of an enemy, for of the latter you may sooner or later hope for an end, but of the former never.”Niccolo Machiavelli: History of Florence, V. 8

More Quotations:

“Some consultants… are simply vending machines… If you hire one of these consultants, you better make sure somebody else is providing the creativity, because they sure won’t be… Hold onto your wallet when you deal with consultants.”